A shipper’s guide to Star Wars: The Last Jedi

StormPilot (Finn/Poe)

An entire ship based on a jacket and a lip-bite (a pretty damning lip-bite but still), StormPilot shippers were already living on an X-Wing and a prayer. But if anything made a shipper’s heart sink, it was their reunion in The Last Jedi.

Poe, happy to see the man to whom he bequeathed his jacket alive and well, runs up to Finn only to be faced immediately with the question “Where’s Rey?”.

StormPilot hearts everywhere splintered with just a single phrase.

However, hopes haven’t died completely. Finn showed that he trusts Poe more than anyone else in the Resistance by disclosing his covert mission and asking for help. He’s still wearing that jacket, too, and why would he do that if he wasn’t in love? Because he’s just woken up from a coma and hasn’t bought new clothes? Because it represents the life-changing moment when he left the Stormtroopers?

Please. He’s wearing like he can smell the sweet unbridled heroism of a man who is one amazing pilot and has the single best hair curl since Christopher Reeve’s Superman. Plus, according to The Last Jedi Visual Encylopedia, Poe “lovingly” (okay, this is our word, not theirs) repaired the jacket whilst Finn recovered, showing that it very much means something to them both. 

All is not lost. If you’ve been keeping up with The Last Jedi press tour, it’s pretty much a meme now that Oscar Isaac is down with the “Poe Dameron is gay” theory. Everyone knows that it’s the biggest fan theory out there when it comes to Poe, and when asked whether fan theories about his character are true, he nodded. What other theories are there, Oscar?!

Call us wilfully blind, but surely, surely this means there is some hope out there for StormPilot.

There are other moments in the ending of The Last Jedi that might seem to put the final nail in the coffin, certain handshakes between characters and kisses between others.

But we’d advise you to look beyond that and towards C’ai Threnalli, the Abednedo whose face Poe gently holds when he sees he’s alive. This, of course, says nothing really about Poe’s sexuality and mostly addresses the fact he is a kind and loving person.

But cut us some slack. Face-holding is the only thing that stands between us and consuming a 140,000-word fanfiction in one sitting. Let us live.